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2010 Tour de France Winner Found Guilty of Doping

After 17 months of legal wrangling and an investigation by Basque authorities to determine the source of some purportedly tainted steaks that Alberto Contador said he ate during the 2010 Tour de France, an appeals court ruled Monday that Contador, a three-time winner of the Tour, was guilty of doping.

The decision from the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, resulted in Contador’s being stripped of his victory in the 2010 Tour and 12 other victories since then, and is yet another blow to a sport that has been repeatedly tarnished by doping scandals among the best cyclists in the world.

Only two Tour de France winners since 1995 — Carlos Sastre in 2008 and Cadel Evans last year — have not become embroiled in controversies involving performance-enhancing drugs. Contador is perhaps the most talented cyclist of his generation and one of only five riders to win the grand tours of France, Italy and Spain. His downfall was a positive test for clenbuterol, a weight-loss and muscle-building drug, during the 2010 Tour.

Some farmers are known to give clenbuterol to cattle and swine to improve their market value. Contador claimed to be a victim of such bad meat.

He told investigators that because he prefers Spanish cuts of meat, a friend purchased a large veal tenderloin in the Basque Country near the French border and brought it to nearby Pau, where it was cooked for Contador and his teammates at a hotel. In elaborate detail over several pages, the panel’s decision describes how an inspector from the Basque government’s department of public health confirmed statements from Contador’s friend as well as his team’s chef that 3.2 kilograms of “veal solomillo,” a large piece of tenderloin, were purchased from the Larrezbal butcher shop at the rather steep price of 32 euros per kilo by Contador’s friend. Inspectors traced the veal back to a wholesale supplier, a slaughterhouse and finally a farmer named Lucio Carabias.

Calculations were presented to the panel showing that Contador had probably purchased about half of a calf’s tenderloin. What no one found, however, was any evidence that the calf had been given clenbuterol.

Contador was unable to produce a sample of the tenderloin. The three-member appeals tribunal concluded that Contador’s claim, while possible, was not substantiated.

Photo

Alberto Contador, right, who blamed tainted beef for a positive test, was suspended and stripped of his 2010 Tour win.Credit
Pool photo by

The ruling, which overturned a decision by the Spanish cycling federation, also gave Contador a two-year ban from racing, applied retroactively. Contador will be allowed to race again Aug. 5 — after this year’s Tour de France — though he may not be able to compete in top events. The loss of his titles could jeopardize the points his team needs to qualify for major races.

Contador’s downfall once again challenges cycling’s ability to regain credibility. The International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body, and the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed to the Swiss court after the Spanish federation’s decision. But Pat McQuaid, the cycling union’s president, said the verdict was not necessarily cause for celebration.

“This is a sad day for our sport,” McQuaid said in a statement. “Some may think of it as a victory, but that is not at all the case. There are no winners when it comes to the issue of doping: every case, irrespective of its characteristics, is always a case too many.”

Contador’s team, Saxo Bank, said the cyclist had no comment.

McQuaid did not respond to requests for comment about the broader significance of the ruling. But some within top-level cycling suggested that cyclists were unfairly singled out for doping because other professional sports had less rigorous testing.

“It’s like someone wants to kill cycling,” Eddy Merckx, the Belgian cyclist who is regarded as one of the best ever, told The Associated Press at the Tour of Qatar. “It’s always cycling that’s attacked, and other sports are never attacked. In other sports, they don’t go so far.”

The most recent data from WADA, which cover 2010, show that only swimming conducts more out-of-competition tests than cycling.

Travis T. Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, declined to rank cycling relative to other sports in terms of the prevalence of doping among its athletes. But he noted that the temptation to dope created by a “winner-takes-all mentality” surrounds every sport — “even inline skating.”

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Alberto Contador riding in the final stage of the 2010 Tour de France, which he won.Credit
Laurent Rebours/Associated Press

He said that cycling’s governing body, which strongly rejected doping allegations during the 1990s, has taken substantial steps against doping.

For years, major doping scandals in cycling were largely revealed by police investigations. Contador’s case, like that of Floyd Landis in the 2006 Tour de France, is the result of the sport’s drug-testing efforts.

The Contador finding, Tygart said, may indicate that cycling is willing to take difficult and unpopular measures against doping.

“It’s easy for a sport to turn the eye and not directly address it,” Tygart said. “It’s not a bad day. If there’s cheating in sport, you should be caught. You can’t fault a sport for agreeing to the WADA code and for relying on independent antidoping agencies to police itself.”

Contador is a leading sports celebrity in Spain, and the case against him was unpopular there. Last year, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister at the time, used the Spanish government’s official Twitter page to argue that “there’s no legal reason to justify sanctioning Contador.”

Unlike the United States, Spain does not have an independent antidoping agency. So Contador’s case was initially heard by the Spanish cycling federation, the governing body that is primarily involved in organizing and promoting the sport.

After initially proposing a one-year ban for Contador, it backtracked about a year ago and cleared him in the case, prompting the appeal to CAS.

The case, and possibly Contador’s woes, are not over. The CAS tribunal is now reviewing the cycling union’s request for a 2.5 million euro fine and other costs and penalties.

Raphael Minder contributed reporting from Madrid.

A version of this article appears in print on February 7, 2012, on page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: A Tour de France Winner Is Found Guilty of Doping. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe